Woman finds black widow in supermarket grapes

DEBERA CARLTON HARREL, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Leesie Ballew, of Shoreline, found a black widow spider in her grapes and donated the spider to the Woodland Park Zoo on Tuesday. "Bessie" will soon look like this black widow, held by lead keeper Erin Sullivan, which was donated to the zoo by Whole Foods in 2004.
Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Leesie Ballew was making lunch for her daughter when she noticed something "black and glossy" in a bunch of red grapes.

First, she saw the spider legs. That urban myth she'd heard as a child growing up in the South flashed through her mind.

Grapes -- and black widows.

She screamed.

But then Ballew did something that sets her apart from most arachnophobes. Instead of pummeling the creeping beast with the nearest rolling pin, Ballew put it in a clean jam jar, grapes and all, and poked holes in the lid. She and her daughter, Sammy, named the spider "Bessie," and Ballew took it to the Woodland Park Zoo on Tuesday.

As Ballew suspected, Bessie turned out to be a venomous, female black widow, one of the few spiders that can harm humans. But Ballew, who lives in Shoreline, was not upset that the spider wound up in her red seedless grapes, which she bought at a QFC grocery store (she declined to say which one).

"There's no way you can keep bugs out of produce," she said.

The bag containing the grapes was marked "Product of Mexico," Ballew said: Black widows, which like warm, climates and are not native to this area, don't eat the grapes; they like the insects that hang out among produce, said Erin Sullivan, lead keeper at Woodland Park Zoo. People have also brought "banana spiders" to the zoo.

Kristin Maas, spokeswoman for QFC, confirmed Tuesday that a store manager reported the black widow after being alerted by Ballew.

"We've had no other reported incidents of black widows or any other spider that's been in our produce," Maas said, referring to a database check for the last 2 1/2 years.

"Lucky for that spider he met a nice lady," Maas said. "I have a terrible fear of spiders; he'd have been squished at my house."

Ballew suspected it was a black widow, but took it to the zoo for confirmation.

"I don't know what made me want to save it," Ballew said. "I wasn't calm when I saw her creeping around the corner of those grapes. It was very scary but in an odd way, we felt lucky. How many people get to see a black widow in their lives? What are the odds -- especially living here?"

Bessie, the sixth "wild caught" black widow the zoo has received from donors over the last year or so, will be fattened up on a diet of liquids and crickets so her abdomen will swell to show the species' telltale red hourglass marking, Sullivan said.

"She'll live here and have a happy, healthy life," Sullivan said. "We'll feed her, love her and put her on display."